Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cooked Frosting
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Beat the egg whites until stiff.
In a pan, combine the sugar and enough water to cover it.
Make the frosting
Cook the sugar mixture until it can form a hair‑like thread when tested with a fork.
Stir the hot sugar mixture into the beaten egg whites until perfectly cold.
Once cooled, the frosting will be thick enough to spread on cake.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg whites
- Beaten into a foam that traps air, giving the frosting a light, airy structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the frosting and, when cooked to a thread, thickens it as it cools.
The step that matters
Cooking the sugar to the thread stage. Sugar syrup sets according to its temperature and concentration. Stopping too early leaves the frosting runny, while cooking too far makes it hard and brittle once cooled.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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